We’ve seen all kinds of ideas for keeping track of your camera’s lens cap when it’s not being used, including velcro, special mounts, fashionable pouches, and even a retractable cap, but Nikon has come up with the best idea yet: a lens cap that attaches to camera straps! A patent filed by the company in 2009 and published yesterday shows a lens cap that can easily clip onto a strap when not in use — a simple solution to a small problem that apparently many entrepreneurs have been interested in solving. Sorry, but Nikon wins this one.
The Arizona Republic features photographer Michael McNamara shot this photo of his camera bag showing the gear he uses for his work. His photographs are used for food, fashion, and lifestyle pieces, and usually requires lighting.
I use a Think Tank Photo Airport Security roller. I use a Canon 5D mk2 and a 1D mk2N for my bodies. I have the standard 16-35, 24-70 and 70-200 zooms, and also have a 50 macro, 100 macro (both for food), 50 1.4 and an 85 1.8 (mainly for portraits). I have a 580EXII and five 550EX strobes.
The “Holy Trinity” of Canon zoom lenses and six strobes. Lovely.
Camera innards are often shown in cross section diagrams, but here’s a Sony Alpha camera and lens that were actually sliced cleanly down the middle (we’re guessing a lightsaber was involved). The build quality of the lens definitely looks cheaper than the sliced Leica lenses we shared last week (as it should). Brownie points if you can identify both the camera model and the lens.
Photography lens manufacturers use all sorts of abbreviations and acronyms to explain the features of their lenses. In an effort to educate use, the photography lens manufacturers really just confuse us. Hopefully you’ll understand a bit about the different lens feature abbreviations by reading this post. Read the rest of this entry »
Check out this wacky-looking custom lens cap designed by Japanese corp UN for the Olympus XZ-1. Many compact cameras don’t offer too much protection for the lens glass when the camera is off and the lens retracted (usually it’s a small plastic cover/curtain), so there are quite a few camera users that might benefit from a cap like this one. It’s secured to the front of the XZ-1 using an Allen key, and is pushed open when the lens extends from the body. When the camera is turned off, the cap automatically folds back into place to protect the glass. It’s supposedly available for about $90 if you email the company directly.
You can pick up a mini tripod for your compact camera over at Meritline today for just $0.74 with shipping included. Just add the tripod to your shopping cart and enter the coupon code MLCKXFHUER0503NL1 at the checkout screen.
If you’ve ever wanted to know what the guts of a Nikon D5100 look like, iFixit just published a meticulously documented teardown of the camera. Aside from pointing out the various parts found in the body, an interesting conclusion the iFixit team came to was that the D5100 has a horrible “Repairability Score” of 2/10, where 10 is easiest to repair. The reason? “Approximately 4 billion screws hold the device together” (They’re exaggerating, of course). Read the rest of this entry »
The Frazier Ultimate lens is like the universe’s anti-matter to the Canon 50mm f/1.0 that we shared yesterday. Rather than have a tiny depth of field and tons of bokeh, the Frazier lens is one that has massive depth of field, allowing both the foreground and background of the image to be in focus at the same time. It’s widely used in Hollywood and in wildlife documentaries, and the video above shows some of the visual tricks you can do when having infinite DoF.
